The present invention relates to a technique of searching for an address of electronic data that satisfy a search request received from an information browsing person, and for presenting the information browsing person with information of the searched address or information to which a link to the electronic data at the searched address is set.
Conventionally, a searching service for finding a desired Web page among massive Web pages opened, on Internet, to the public, is provided. A means for realizing such a service is called a search engine, As search engines, directory-type (registration-type) search engines and robot-type search engines are known.
In either type of search engine, a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of a Web page opened to the public by an Information disclosing person (an administrator of a Web server or a producer of the Web page) is registered in a search database, being associated with a search condition of the Web page in question. Then, input of a search condition is received using, for example, CGI (Common Gateway Interface), from an information browsing person (a user of a Web browser) who has accessed a search engine site on Internet. And, a URL of a Web page registered in the search database, being associated with a search condition that coincides with or approximates to the received search condition, is searched for, and the retrieved URL or information set with a link to the site of that URL is presented to the information browsing person.
Here, in the directory-type search engine, URLs of Web pages are classified by category to register in the search database, Namely, category is used as a search condition. Frequently, correspondence of a URL of a Web page to a category is decided based on designation by an information disclosing person who opens the Web page in question to the public.
On the other hand, in the robot-type search engine, a URL of a Web page is registered in the search database, associating the URL with keywords used in that Web page. Namely, keywords are used as a search condition. Processing of accessing each Web page opened to the public on the Internet, obtaining keywords used in the Web page in question, and registering those keywords in the search database, associating those keywords with the URL of that Web page, is automatically performed.